


under every spreading tree

by starcunning



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Chocolate Box Exchange, Chocolate Box Exchange 2021, Dirty Talk, M/M, Selfcest, Sexual Harassment, Teasing, Temptation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29153199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcunning/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: Fulgrim has seen that face before.In marble, in memories, in mirrors.
Relationships: Clone of Fulgrim/Fulgrim
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	under every spreading tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BuddyWritesFic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuddyWritesFic/gifts).



Fulgrim has seen that face before.

In marble, in memories, in mirrors.

It comes to him sometimes, in the dark behind his eyelids. However still his body, his mind is a harder thing to quell. Time should stop, but thought does not. Perhaps it is something to do with the towering quality of his soul—he has heard enough, learned enough in his brief life to know that those examples that defied the very definitions of the word “stasis” are all his kin.

And so too is this, the thing that wears his face.

“Better said that you wear mine,” opines the other Fulgrim—though all at once Fulgrim is sure he bears that same epithet in his eponym’s mind, and with at least as much disdain.  
Fulgrim says nothing; _can_ say nothing. Even if he could, he has nothing to say to his other self. Nothing but disdain for his actions, for the twisted nature of his soul, which is written plainly across his form: what else could mean the vast sails of tattered wings, the coil of violet scales, the fell Tyrian light that seems to cling to every plane of his face.  
“Power, little clone,” says the other Fulgrim. “They mean _power_ beyond your grasp. I could teach you, you know. We always were an eager student.”

He hates when the other speaks of them like this—like the shared memory of their history makes them one and the same. Would flinch, if he were capable of flinching. He swears he can feel the cool, fruit-peel texture of scales against his perfect skin.

“‘Perfect,’” echoes the other Fulgrim, but a moment after the word enters his mind. “What would you know about perfection?”  
He has been called perfect strangely often in his short life, and had not thought to rankle at it until the first time he saw his own reflection—in something other than memory or marble or mirror. Now the word that had once been a point of pride rankles with him, like the too-sweet scent of overripe fruit just before the flies set in.

Fulgrim would gladly take the maddening tedium of stasis over the slithering coil of the other’s grasp, over the rasp of dark nails against pale flesh. His other self can neither tempt nor destroy him here as he once did Ferrus.

“Not once,” the other Fulgrim corrects. “A dozen times. A hundred. _We—_ for you are part of this, too!—made plain our clemency a thousand times and always we were rebuked by those imperfect mockeries. That rejection was the very proof of their flaw. Ferrus _loved_ me. He would never have refused me. You remember, don’t you?”

He does, and it would turn his stomach if it could.

“If I killed him, so did you,” the other Fulgrim says, petulant. “If you truly think yourself my equal, then you would have made all the same choices as me. It is inevitable that you _will_ make the same choices as me.”

He rejects that belief as vehemently as he can, as though to abjure the other thereby.

“No?” says the other Fulgrim, sounding truly wounded. “Really? Others will not see it so. What would you do, really, if you were able to struggle free of this cage? Run to shelter beneath the laurels of Roboute Guilliman?” The other Fulgrim scoffs. “We tried to _kill_ him, fool. We _should_ have killed him. He won’t soon forget that, and you’ll bear the guilt of it—and the price. No matter what you do now. If one’s to be punished, you might as well sin. An old Chemosian philosophy. You’ll remember it, I trust?”

Fulgrim is annoyed to discover that he does. It had been an old joke among the workers of Callax, and a more private one between Fulgrim and the first woman he had married—less for love than political and economic advantage, though her quick wit had endeared her to him.

“Do you remember her name?” the other Fulgrim asks. There is but a moment of pause before he continues: “I do,” the other asserts. “Darling Athirat. So patient with our foundering. I could be as patient with you, you know.”

This is new, and the surprise that jolts through Fulgrim is not _entirely_ unpleasant, nearly real enough for him to feel. And he _does_ long to feel. He is starved for sensation in this exile, starved for companionship, for love. Though not nearly enough to fall for such _predations_ as this.

“A predator consumes,” scolds the other Fulgrim. “I am an artist, that would remake you as you are meant to be. I know you, little foundling. I know everything about you—you need hide nothing. Spare nothing. Think of it. Well, if you remember Athirat, you’ll remember the others. Such things they taught us.” He sighs with a sort of nostalgic pleasure.

If they share all the same memories, Fulgrim reasons, then his other self has nothing to teach him. Fulgrim clings to this fact, but his grasp is as slippery as oil-slicked skin, and the coils of temptation are tightening.

“I am not asking you to learn from our memories, but from the example they set. Ilus? Our lover, our husband, Ilus—’til he met _me_ he loved no cock better than his own. He had a cast made of it so that he could fuck himself. We always repented of breaking him of the habit a little, didn’t we?” The other Fulgrim might almost be pouting, from his tone. “Oh, it was thrilling, to find him so devoted, but still … don’t you envy the notion, even now? I remember how badly we wanted that—how offended he was at the very notion of supplanting his own prick with a facsimile of our own. Do you still think of that? You must have a great deal of time to fill, here. Imagine. Imagine your own cock spreading you wide, filling you up. We can have that, you know. We can do _better_ than he did,” Fulgrim hisses. “I know you want this—I know you must, because I want it. I can remember wanting it. But we can surpass that idle dream! You could wrap yourself around your own cock and find it attached to a living, responsive lover. Could feel your own hands upon your skin and be surprised by them—all four of them, as it were. I know all the ways you’d touch yourself. I know all the things you wouldn’t dare ask your lovers to do for you. Every thought you’ve ever had, everything you’ve ever craved … they all belong to me. All you need to do is acknowledge it.”

He—the other Fulgrim, the clone of Fulgrim, is glad of the stillness of time. Of the rigidness of his body, because he does not know he trusts it not to betray him—to nod, unthinking. He wishes he could open his eyes. He wishes he could close them. That he might shut away the sight of Tyrian scales and blackened claws, of the undulating mass of white hair that fair glows against his mind.

“No? Not today?” wonders the daemon prince. “It hardly matters. Time is as meaningless for me as it is for you. More so. Should you _want_ me, only spare a thought, and I’ll be inside you soon enough.”

The clone is not sure then of his solitude, but even if he were, he knows he would find no relief. He is too full of regret and bitter memory—and of the ache of longing that throbs through him like a beacon, even in the stillness of time. And he is less sure than ever which of them is Fulgrim—and whether there was ever a difference.

**Author's Note:**

> > Are you not a brood of rebels,  
> the offspring of liars?  
> You burn with lust among the oaks  
> and under every spreading tree  
> 
> 
> Isaiah 57:4-5, New International Version


End file.
